JPMorgan is revolutionizing the way Wall Street banks work with tech startups

JPMorgan's technology offices in Manhattan. JPMorgan JPMorgan is taking a new approach to working with tech startups.

The firm is expected to launch a residency program for financial technology, or fintech, companies on Thursday in an effort to tackle strategic and security-related challenges.

The in-residence startups will be tasked with finding innovative solutions to specific challenges — which will be listed on JPMorgan's website — using technologies like distributed ledger, big data, or machine learning.

The program is the latest step by a Wall Street bank to improve its technology. Many firms are choosing to work with fintech startups rather than risk getting disrupted by them.

Some, like Barclays and Deutsche Bank, have launched startup accelerators. Others are making strategic investments in the tech companies.

But JPMorgan's residence program is a little different: The corporate and investment bank will house the fintech companies for six months in its offices around the world, and they will work alongside the bank's own businesses.

JPMorgan has been proactive about incorporating fintech into its operations. It launched a trial project earlier this year with the blockchain startup Digital Asset Holdings. Blythe Masters, its CEO, is a former JPMorgan executive.

The firm is also developing new technologies in-house and employs about 40,000 technologists across the firm, with a $9 billion technology budget.

"Fintech and new capabilities, they are crucial for everything that we do," Daniel Pinto, the head of the corporate investment bank, said at JPMorgan's Investor Day in February.

He announced at the time that the firm would be creating the residency program and said that, despite JPMorgan building most of the technology it uses, the firm was not afraid to partner with startups to codevelop certain applications.

The "business of technology," Pinto said, is no longer a back-office concern, but rather "totally integrated" into the firm's businesses.